Volunteering

Lived Experience Practitioners

Lived Experience Practitioners work with people who have been diagnosed with mental health conditions.

They are people who have experienced their own mental health problems and can draw upon their lived experience of mental health challenges and their personal recovery journey, to develop empathic relationships and support recovery for Oxleas mental health service users.

They will work across our directorates, boroughs (Bexley/Bromley/Greenwich) and teams.

Lived Experience Practitioners are both volunteers and paid – the latter requires a 12-week training course.

Training is one day a week, from 10am – 5pm.

The paid role will require a minimum of 15 hours per week whilst the volunteer role will be whatever time you can commit to.

Japleen Kaur, head of volunteering, said: “It’s a really exciting time for Oxleas to have LXPs who are willing to use their lived experience to enhance and create an even more positive image of the service we deliver.

“Our aim is to get an LXP in every team, and branch out to other services as well.”

Meet one of our Lived Experience Practitioners

Meet Amy Wattingham, the Lead Lived Experience Practitioner (LXP) for Adult Mental health services based at Memorial Hospital, Shooters Hill, for three days a week.

Amy comes from a teaching background and is also a teacher trainer who has delivered corporate training in her past.

What is your role as an LXP?

It’s a new role for the Trust and a branch between people and mental health services where I can use my own experience to help others in crisis. I hope to ‘humanise’ what can sometimes be a very fearful process for some, thereby enhancing the patient’s experience.

I’m privileged to be in this position where I can influence a real change in people’s attitudes by breaking down stigmas and myths.

What have you done so far?

I have been going out to teams and spreading the word of LXPs, getting people ready for change, which requires a lot of work! I hope to do some more clinical work myself and co-facilitate the running of some groups at Green Parks House.

Currently I am busy preparing the launch of the third lived experience practitioners training cohort and recruiting for participants to have a March 2017 start date.

I am really looking forward to taking the LXP roles to a place where they are firmly embedded in the Trust.